


but at least the war is over

by CurareChai



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: (alternate title: two dudes sleeping on a bed five inches apart bc they're kinda gay), Gen, Post-Series, Sharing a Bed, Trick or Treat 2017, references to 4x17: The Wall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-23 07:13:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12501808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurareChai/pseuds/CurareChai
Summary: "So," Sylar drawled out, walking easily away from the hotel they spent the night unsleeping, watching muted news about the Incident come trickling in, "anywhere in particular, or are we just driving?" He lay a hand on a nearby car, watching it come to roaring life with satisfaction.Peter smiled at the noise, so foreign after so long without it, but so familiar immediately now. He clambered into the driver's seat before Sylar could claim it. "You know, for someone who spent the past decade doing nothing but self-flagellation you seem awfully blase about being on the lam again."





	but at least the war is over

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GotTheSilver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GotTheSilver/gifts).



11 AM

"So," Sylar drawled out, walking easily away from the hotel they spent the night unsleeping, watching muted news about the Incident come trickling in, "anywhere in particular, or are we just driving?" He lay a hand on a nearby car, watching it come to roaring life with satisfaction.

Peter smiled at the noise, so foreign after so long without it, but so familiar immediately now. He clambered into the driver's seat before Sylar could claim it. "You know, for someone who spent the past decade doing nothing but self-flagellation you seem awfully blase about being on the lam again."

"Well," Sylar said, opening the car door. "Considering you only act like a whining adolescent and neither of us has killed anyone yet, this is probably still an improvement over last time." He threw both their bags in the backseat, relishing Peter's laugh as he curled into the passenger side, and watched the sunlight come streaming in.

 

2 PM

Sylar watched Peter drive through empty back roads, keeping one eye on the steering wheel and waving his hand fruitlessly at Peter's yogurt cup, a truly indulgent stack of foil lids flying out the window. "It's been 30 minutes, are you still eating? The whole car smells like blue 2 yellow 5."

"How do you possibly hate Danimals, that's what I want to know," Peter said, sticking yet another heaping spoonful into his mouth. "I mean seriously. You managed to create a whole mental city full of unique apartments, and 4 separate editions of  _Pillars of the Earth_ , but the idea of any yogurt in the state of New York is beyond your mind?"

"Well pardon me for not imagining fancy mold in my personal jail cell," Sylar said waspishly over Peter's affronted gasp, and for a brief second felt only amused irritation. He didn't need to remember the longing, the nagging revulsion, the sheer sensory noise of so many mundane people that they both felt so keenly, pretended it was the rumble of the car that lulled him to sleep instead of the quiet. Anything would be grating after 9 years of silence, after all.

 

7 PM

"I don't care if it's out of our way, I want Sparkle Fun, Peter. It's superior to all the other kinds, and I hardly quibble about what _you_ brush your teeth with." Sylar turned off the car, getting halfway into the convenience store before Peter managed to catch up to him, the automatic doors staying open with a desultory beep.

"Yeah, because I can use mint like a rational person. We've been to two separate stores already, we're supposed to be undercover, can't we just get you a toothbrush with a Barbie on it and be done?" The low buzz of the other customers was growing, somehow, echoing against Sylar's skull until he could barely hear Peter over the din.

Sylar glared at Peter in some semblance of normality, snatching a tube of rainbow toothpaste - finally - from the hygiene section and taking two toothbrushes with it to the counter. "Just because you have low standards doesn't mean the rest of us do."

"Just because you have low-" Peter broke off his parroted response, looking incredulously at Sylar. "Are you registering for a rewards card?" He watched Sylar's white-knuckled grip on the keypad slowly loosen with the steady entering of numbers.

"Frugality, like all virtue, is born of habit," Sylar replied loftily as he paid with cash from the register, half-remembering his mother saying the same thing. Peter ran behind him as Sylar swept out the store again, only pausing to stick his tongue out at the sliding door, whose beeping was decidedly more alarmed.

 

12 PM

Peter smiled half-heartedly at the clerk, pulling out a credit card for- huh, Franklin Duwalle. Poor dude. "Hi, we're getting a single queen, please."

Sylar frowned, half from the clerk and half at Peter. "Well, it does make tracking us harder, but are you sure it won't just draw attention? Being forgettable is important."

Peter looked at him askance, walking to their room as Sylar followed exactly 5 steps behind him. "Yeah, I'm sure Primatech will bother to poll every cashier in Who-Even-Cares, New Jersey on 'confirmed bachelors'. Not like they're currently dealing with more pressing problems, what with Claire's debut being so well-received." He rolled his eyes, ignoring the question for a moment.

He slid the key-card into the reader, juggling his keys. When it failed to make any beeps, displeased or otherwise, Peter resorted to jimmying it in furiously between the door and the jamb. Mostly it was to watch Sylar twitch his fingers, itching to ask the lock to open, barely an afterthought, do you have to do everything the hardest possible way-

Peter surreptitiously blew on the now-smoking key-card as the door swung inward, flopping onto the floral bedspread with a groan and wriggling into the center. "I just don't want a repeat of last night. Maybe if we're close enough you can sleep and I can sleep and it'll be fine."

Sylar toed off his shoes, sending them to the corner with the rest of his things. "Fine," he said, already settling into the dip only caused by truly terrible mattress springs. Any rest would be an improvement, even with Peter's bony elbow already digging into his stomach. He lay his head scant inches from Peter, listening to his soft breaths crashing against each other, and slept.

 

5 AM

Sylar slipped out of Peter's octopus grip, awake for the fourth time this night, unable to bear the unending noise any longer. Every single puerile breath in this motel rattled in his ears, louder with each passing second. A hundred pounding hearts, no a thousand, a million echoing through him, a cacophony of flesh and sinew and blood so ungrateful to be kept in its fragile vessel-

The sink's rushing faucet crashed into the pipes below, the tinny feedback a single foothold. Peter's slow breathing filtered in through his ears as he preoccupied himself with the shimmer of light in his toothpaste and the mechanical scratch of unused bristles crushed against the back of his tongue.

He had called it hell, locked in his own mind, but he hadn't known the real struggle yet. There was no sound behind the Wall, no smell, no temptation. For almost a decade he thought himself first condemned, then later redeemed. Two days outside, and he was already wondering if he was allowed the brother sleeping just outside, if he didn't belong back in his cell.

He looked himself dead in the eyes, a smudge of toothpaste where the corner of his mouth lined up. You deserve this, he glared into the mirror, trying to imprint it into the figure on the other side of the glass. You paid your dues in full.

The figure in the mirror broke away to spit, rinsing out his mouth after. He evaporated the water on his brush, tucking his kit back into his duffel. Sylar walked out of the room, sitting on the bed, and listened to the soft thrum of Peter's heart to hold the rest at bay.

 

10 AM

Sylar took the driver's seat, not saying a word until the city had faded into town, into farm, into fields. The sunlight backlit Peter's worried face, the concerned tilt of his head as he waited for an answer Sylar couldn't give.

"I don't want to kill," he said finally. Resting in the air it could have been anything, declaration or plea, truth or another deeper truth.

Peter nodded, sliding his hand over Sylar's between them. "Alright," he said, the warmth from his palm flooding into Sylar's. Sylar grabbed at that fleeting feeling, the quiet of the countryside and the deliberate beating of Peter's heart. He drove until the asphalt in front of him slipped far away under his feet, faded warnings blurring to black on white on black.

**Author's Note:**

> A present for GotTheSilver! It's a bit of a trick and a treat, I kinda blended your likes. I hope this was the kind of road trip feeling you were envisioning (minus Sylar's Opinions on yogurt, that's all on me). I've wanted to write a post-Wall Sylar piece for a while, and the way Sylar chose not to kill in the middle of what must be crazy sensory overload was something I was always struck by. Especially with Sylar's tendency to be good for about 3 episodes before murdering several people in a fit of pique, I figured it couldn't be as easy as that. 
> 
> Title is from In Our Bedroom After The War, by Stars. Comments, kudos, and critique are all appreciated, thanks for reading!


End file.
